healthsystemCIO.com Anthony Guerra

It’s the dirty little secret among healthcare cyber professionals — they don’t know where all their ePHI is; not even close. And while those professionals are not to blame (healthcare workflows and, thus, data flows are messy business); they do have to get their arms around the problem. The first step? Understand it. In this unique webinar, we’ll explore the results of a Ponemon study on the state of ePHI in healthcare to learn just how bad the problem is and where the data might be. Then, we’ll explore ways to secure it and, in the process, hopefully give cyber professionals one less reason to be up at night.

Speakers:



* Larry Ponemon, PhD, Chairman & Founder, Ponemon Institute

* David Ting, CTO/Co-Founder, Tausight

The current healthcare system is fraught with challenges. Between workforce shortages, regulatory changes, and evolving consumer needs, the ecosystem is “just not sustainable the way it is today,” said Heather O’Sullivan.

The answer, she believes, is close to home. At least, that’s the case for Mass General Brigham, which developed a Healthcare at Home Division in 2022 to offer “a hybrid alternative to traditional care settings.” One of its four verticals, the Home Hospital, has made quite an impact, having served more than 3,500 episodes of care, which equates to some 19,000 bed days saved.

The ability to provide care in the patient home has resulted in “significant cost savings, reduced utilization, and improved patient experiences compared to traditional hospital settings,” said O’Sullivan during a recent interview with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at healthsystemCIO. It has also meant fewer lab orders and imaging studies, along with lower readmission rates. The movement has been “resoundingly favorable,” both among patients and families and staff, she noted.

And there are no plans to stop. In fact, Mass General Brigham is looking to increase the eligible patient pool to 10 percent of all current inpatient medical volume. Not an easy feat, but the organization is committed to changing the landscape, according to O’Sullivan. During the interview, she talked about the success her team has achieved, as well as the hurdles they’ve overcome, and what it takes to build and sustain this type of model – from executive buy-in to vendor partnerships to the infrastructure piece.

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Q&A with Heather O’Sullivan, President, Healthcare at Home, Mass General Brigham

Gamble:  Hi Heather, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. We look forward to hearing about what your team is doing. Can you start by giving an overview of the organization?

O’Sullivan:  Sure. Mass General Brigham overall is a $18 billion non-profit academic medical center comprising three specialty hospitals, seven community hospitals, and two founding academic medical centers: Mass General Hospital and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. And the system prioritizes patient-centered care; we’re actually the largest NIH recipient in the country for research. We employ over 80,000 colleagues.

The Healthcare at Home Division was established in 2022 to offer a hybrid alternative to traditional care settings. The Healthcare at Home Division has four service verticals. The first is our largest full acute episode home hospital in the country. We have five distinct CMS licenses for acute level care. The second vertical, which is also the chassis for all of Healthcare at Home, is our Legacy Home Care business. It was established in 2007 and is actually the largest home health entity in Massachusetts.

From a technology perspective, we offer personal emergency response systems [for] infusion care, phlebotomy, in addition to the traditional skilled nursing and therapy and home health aide support. And there are two more emerging verticals in the healthcare home portfolio that are interesting. One is the emergency care for urgent patient needs in the home setting, and the other is home-based palliative care.

And so, collectively, the array of home-based offerings really addresses our system’s key challenges around capacity constraints while emphasizing patient comfort and privacy.

Gamble:  So, the HAH Division was established in 2022, but obviously, the groundwork had been in place for quite a bit before then.

O’Sullivan:  Yes.

Savvy healthcare IT security professionals are as focused on an efficient recovery if something goes down as they are on keeping the enterprise up. And to be positioned for success around recovery, it’s imperative business continuity plans are right sized to address the large amounts of data that health systems are amassing every day. In this timely webinar, we’ll speak to leaders who know that — with such growth — the data-protection approach of yesterday may not work for today, let alone tomorrow. We’ll explore the policies, procedures, governance and technologies they are putting in place so that if things go down, they can be back up and running as soon as possible.

Speakers:



* Adam Zoller, CISO, Providence

* Sanjeev Sah, System VP, IT Strategy & Cyber, CommonSpirit Health

* Jon Kimerle, Director, Global Healthcare Strategic Alliances, Pure Storage

For a whole host of reasons — security, cost and interoperability to name a few — heath systems are looking to shrink the number of vendor/partners they work with. To that end, hospitals have launched application rationalization efforts seeking to retire one-offs or little used apps, along with raising the bar to bring in new ones. One area where this effort has run into challenges is around patient engagement, where point solution vendors seek to address the many tasks that fall under its large umbrella; such as access, communication, and readiness. In this timely webinar, we’ll speak to leaders who have thought through their patient engagement journey so — as they move from here to there — they don’t pick up an excessive number of isolated vendor/partners along the way.

Speakers:



* Zafar Chaudry, MD, SVP/CIO, Seattle Children’s Hospital

* Dick Taylor, MD, Chief Clinical Informatics Officer, BJC Healthcare

* Aditya Bansod, Co-Founder/CTO, Luma Health

They represent the crown jewels for cybercriminals — legitimate login credentials that will allow them an undetected entrance to your network. And while security executives are doing everything possible — such as extensive training and phishing tests — to guard against compromise, it’s not a question of if but when someone will make a mistake and accidentally divulge their coveted username and password. If they do so, it’s possible for threat actors to run amok undetected in your environment. However, new technologies and strategies mean that’s no longer the case. In this timely webinar, we’ll speak to security leaders who are working hard to understand identity risks, and are leveraging a defense-in-depth strategy to detect and respond to active threats as quickly as possible.

Speakers:



* Jesse Fasolo, Director, Technology Infrastructure & Cyber Security, Information Security Officer, St. Joseph Health

* Michael Shrader, Director (CISO), Information Security, WellSpan Health

* Ryan Witt, VP, Industry Solutions, Healthcare, Proofpoint

There’s an old parenting saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Of course, it’s meant to get parents off the hook for not demonstrating the behavior they want emulated. Unfortunately, it rarely works, as the disconnect between talk and action isn’t lost on the little ones. When it comes to recent conferences, some have cited a disconnect between saying cyber is as important as anything else and showing that’s the case by bringing security-related talks to the main stage. In fact, both shows had cyber theaters or pavilions that were a tad off the beaten path. This dynamic was not lost on Keith Duemling, Senior Director of Cybersecurity Technology Protection, Cleveland Clinic, who said the solution isn’t putting the two side by side, but weaving cyber presentations into the main stage content. In this interview with healthsystemCIO Founder & Editor-in-Chief Anthony Guerra, Duemling also discusses how the shows treated provider executives, and his conference plans for the future.



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Bold Statements

I was trying to think of an analogy that would be helpful in comparing the two. I came up with the idea that ViVE felt like the holidays with your immediate family, where you’re focused on those intimate connections and opportunities to really reminisce; and HIMSS felt like holidays with the entire extended family; great to see everyone, catching up with people you’ve not seen before, learning about those changes that have happened.

I think one of the challenges for cyber at any type of multidisciplinary conference is – just like technology in general 20 years ago – how do you not get put over on the side, as in, ‘That’s the place over there where the cyber people gather,’ and everybody else goes (to the main area) for their other things.

There’s always a healthy amount of communication and invitations and things like that. But it felt very refined, and it was better. If you said, ‘I’m not available or please put me as tentative,’ you were respected, and I didn’t feel like I had to hide my badge when I was walking through the solution provider hall for fear of being chased down into a booth or something like that.

Anthony: Welcome to healthsystemCIO’s HIMSS Wrap-up interview with Keith Duemling, Senior Director of Cybersecurity Technology Protection with the Cleveland Clinic. I’m Anthony Guerra, Founder and Editor-in-Chief. Keith, thanks for joining me.

Keith: Great to be here, Anthony. Thank you for the opportunity.

Anthony: I know you went to ViVE and HIMSS. What were your impressions, specifically of HIMSS?

Keith: Well, I appreciate the question. Yes, I’m recovering from attending both conferences, both great experiences but as you can imagine, whirlwind experiences. To your questions, I think without showing exactly my age, I’ve probably been to at least 10 of the HIMSS conferences, probably like most people, the vast majority pre-Covid. I’ve definitely seen the conference evolve over those years, especially with Covid being a major point of evolution for pretty much everything in society.

Anthony: Your thoughts? What was your experience this year? Do you think this is on the upswing, this is on the downswing? Just any impressions on how the conference is trending?

Keith: I think HIMSS is definitely on the upswing, in my opinion. It has a very expansive program. You really have to be strategic on how you approach it because it can be overwhelming if you’re not very intentional.